SOUTH PORTLAND – Before a small shopping center near the Maine Mall can be built, the South Portland City Council must first agree to close a short section of a road that divides the two parcels of land on which the retail development would be constructed.

The project, at 85 Western Ave., won city Planning Board approval last week, with the stipulation that the council first approve the road closure. The two parcels are located on either side of the Gorham Road Extension, which runs from Westbrook Street to the intersection of Western Avenue and Gorham Road.

The council is scheduled to vote on whether to close Gorham Road Extension on May 3.

However, a resident of the nearby Brick Hill neighborhood is unhappy at the prospect that local residents may lose access to that stretch of road.

Adrian Dowling said the road allows him and his neighbors in Brick Hill and Redbank to avoid the busy intersection of Westbrook Street and Western Avenue, which he describes as a “terrible intersection.”

Dowling wrote to the Planning Board regarding the Gorham Road Extension: “It may be a short little road … but I use that road several times a day, every day, and in the three years that I’ve lived here, not a day has gone by that I haven’t seen several of my neighbors using that road as well.”

And a representative of the C.N. Brown gas station on Western Avenue near the proposed shopping center also objected to the road closure. Russell Cloutier said it would make access to his store difficult.

The Planning Board in February voted 6-0 to recommend the closing of 838 feet of Gorham Road Extension. A portion of the road would remain to provide rear access to existing business next to the shopping center, but it would not longer be a through street.

The shopping center would be a small one, but has been years in the planning.

It would be about 30,000 square feet and the developer, Vincent Maietta, has previously said he expects it to have such stores as Subway sandwich shop, a Buffalo Wings N Things, a greeting card store, a copying center and a FedEx center.

Maietta owns one of the parcels that would become the shopping center. The other one is owned by the city, which has agreed to sell it to Maietta for $600,000.

The city initiated the sale of its lot in 2006, and the sales agreement was formally signed two years ago.

As part of the pending sales agreement, the city agreed to discontinue the extension road so Maietta can join the two lots and build the shopping center.

However, there are some wetlands on the property, so it took about two years for Maietta to gain the Maine Department of Environmental Protection approval he needed to move forward on the development.

Earlier this year, the City Council approved a zoning change for the project that put both parcels in a Limited Business District zone. The change lessens the setback requirements for the property. That means Maietta, who is doing business in this case as 85 Western Avenue LLC, can have more parking spaces in the shopping center.

Erik Carson, assistant city manager and also the city’s economic development director, has previously said the city would benefit from the sale of the land.

The money could be used by the city to put into a fund to purchase open space and also maintain city buildings, Carson said. Also, he said, the shopping center would bring in new tax revenues of $60,000 to $80,000 a year.

He also has said the intersection of Gorham Road and Western Avenue would be more efficient if the project is approved.

However, Dowling, the Brick Hill resident, said he believes the intersection at Western Avenue and Westbrook Street would worsen if residents of his neighborhood are forced to use that instead of Gorham Road Extension. He said that intersection is already difficult to navigate because of a median and the sharp turn needed when turning left into the intersection from Western Avenue.

“If the Gorham Road Extension (closure) is a done deal, I would like to see them make some improvements to the Westbrook Street intersection,” Dowling said.

The city’s planning director, Charles A. “Tex” Haeuser, said that intersection was already widened a few years ago when the Brick Hill housing was built. He said a traffic engineer has said that if the shopping center is built, the intersection could handle extra traffic without problems.

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